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Lapis Lazuli
An International Literary Journal
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VOL.5 / NO.2/ AUTUMN 2015
‘The Subaltern as Subject’ in Mahasweta Devi’s Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima and The Book of
the Hunter: Paradigms of Living
Srirupa Mahalanabis
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Abstract:
An integral part of what constitutes our folk culture includes the tribes of India. How far
the Indian tribal communities have been incorporated in mainstream culture is subject to study.
One of the most radical and revolutionary Indian writers in modern times, Mahasweta Devi has
been fighting relentlessly for the cause of the tribes in India. Her writings pose both challenges
and opportunities for interdisciplinary readings. They present local aura against a historical
background, which is fictionally constructed but cannot be separated from history at the same
time. Although Mahasweta Devi has refrained from being called a “feminist writer” arguing that
she did not consider women folk as a separate identity, her deep felt considerations for the
women in her texts clearly surprise the reader. My paper takes into discussion two fictional texts
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translated into English—The Book of the Hunter and Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima—and reads into the
lives of two women who in spite of their subaltern position succeed in challenging their
environment. Only a thin line exists between fiction and reality. In such an environment “Phuli”
and “Lacchima” display sheer strength and will-power and finally win their liberation—at
whatever cost.
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“I‟ll teach the bhangis a lesson. They can make up their songs, paint their faces, and
clown around but they shouldn‟t bring the maliks into it. A malik is a malik” (Devi 76)
“the tribal world is like a continent handed over to us, and we never tried to explore it,
know its mysteries, we only destroyed it. We did not respect them . . . it struck me then, I
have to write about the tribals, I have to, because these things will vanish, there will be
more industries . . .” (Devi xi-xii)
In a nation where the tribal community constitutes 8.3% of the total population, over 84
million people according to the March 2001 census, their fractional representation in literature is
a thought provoking concern. Mahasweta Devi stands among the forerunners in contemporary
Indian writing who has brought the life of the tribes to the mainstream, urbane, bourgeoisie
society and culture. Her texts are not only of significance to a student of sociology but of
paramount importance in inter-disciplinary studies for the betterment and uplifting of
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humankind. In this Mahasweta Devi stands as the “prophet of the subalterns.” In this paper, I
embark upon the task to read through the two texts, The Glory of Sri Sri Ganesh and The Book of
the Hunter to locate and contextualize the position of women in respect to gender, identity and
folklore. Unlike her short stories such as “The Hunt,” “Douloti, the Bountiful” and “BreastGiver” (translated from the original Bengali text “Stanadyani”) where the women are seen as
objects of commodity, these two novels read through the same lines but in a smoother, subtler
tone. It is evident that Devi‟s fiction is the medium to articulate the agonies of this suppressed
class. Although her preoccupation with the bane is evident in her wrritings, she never viewed
women-folk as a separate entity—woman is perceived as just another victim undistinguished
from the proletariat in general. Devi is a literary writer with a purpose. Her texts are activist
writings directed to effect a change of mind in the urban intelligentsia and bring to mainstream
consciousness an understanding of the pitiful state in which a section of the nation lives.
The question of subalternity and its accompanying implications in the understanding
of what really comprises rural India has always been surrounded by doubts and unavailability
of accurate facts and figures. Efforts taken by the respective authorities have most often than
not served the purpose of the intelligentsia in recording accounts rather than serving the need
of those most affected. Popular culture has primarily rejected subaltern ethnicity on the plea
that it signifies a marginal and distanced society whose concerns fail to contribute to the
spirit of nationalism or nationalist consciousness. It is only recently that an interest spree has
risen to understand the subaltern face of rural India.
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On 2 October 1985, The Anthropological Survey of India under the guiding editorship of
K. S. Singh launched a project to identify the gap in the existing record of the numerous tribes
and classes in India (Singh). In West Bengal 203 communities were studied out of which 49
communities belong to the Scheduled caste category and 28 belong to the scheduled Tribe
community. The Lodhas of Medinipur and the Sobors also known as the Kheria tribe are the two
de-notified tribes in West Bengal. The British Government had passed the Criminal Tribes Act in
1871 that notified about 150 tribes across India as Criminal, giving the police wide powers to
arrest them and monitor their movements. While in reality crime went largely unreported and
unrecorded, the supposed criminality of these criminal tribes and castes were inextricably
connected to their lineage and genealogy. In 1952, a newly independent India repealed the
criminal Tribes Act and “de-notified” them but they were again classified as “habitual offenders”
in 1959. This is the easiest way of a so to say „liberal‟ society that allows that society to be seen
as “good” and anything that lies outside it as “bad”. Herein lies the dualistic structure of the
society.
Now why this discussion is of importance in the study of the two central characters in this
paper is to locate them in an essentially „developing‟ society. The women in Devi‟s novels do
not belong to the mainstream society and are relegated as “subaltern” women. Devi writes:
The tribals and the mainstream have always been parallel. There has never a meeting
point. . . . They have to beg for everything they need. They do not understand mainstream
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machination, so although there are safeguarding laws against land grabbing, tribal land is
being sold illegally everyday, and usurped by mainstream society all over India,
especially West Bengal. . . . Nothing is done for them although so much money is allotted
for them. They do not want money, they want facilities, they want to live the life of a
honorable poor Indian. . . . The tribals of India are denied everything. (Devi ii-iii)
In her essay “Women in Difference: Mahasweta Devi‟s „Douloti the Bountiful,‟” Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak states that “Mahasweta Devi lingers in post coloniality in the space of
difference.” In explaining what she means by this, Spivak writes:
the political goals of the new nation supposedly are determined by a regulative logic
derived from the old colony, with its interest reversed: secularism, democracy, socialism,
national identity and capitalist development. Whatever the fate of this supposition, it must
be admitted that there is always a space that cannot share in the energy of this reversal.
This space had no established agency of traffic with the culture of imperialism.
Paradoxically this space is also outside of organized labour, below the attempted
reversals of capital logic. Conventionally this space is described as the habitat of the „sub
proletariat‟ or the „subaltern.‟ Mahasweta Devi focuses on it as the space of the
displacement of the colonization-decolonization reversal. (106)
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Within this space of displacement Devi writes the history of these dispossessed,
marginalized, disinherited tribals who have been almost written out. The women in her novels
therefore are born with two disadvantages: firstly, the disadvantage of being born a woman, seen
both as a body (i.e. an object of desire with no independent existence) and as the “other” (i.e.
inferior in class, station and as such seen as “subaltern”); secondly, the disadvantage of being
born a “subaltern woman” with all its added disadvantages and disinheritances. The loss of
identity and the search for voice which have been alter egos of women in particular from time
immemorial is manifested in its more bitter aspects in the life of the tribal women.
Jim Masselos in “The Dis/appearance of Subalterns: A Reading of a Decade of Subaltern
Studies” raises a central posit in the definition of the subaltern: Who and what are the subalterns?
Ranajit Guha explains the usage in two ways—positively by outlining what they are and
negatively as a constituent of a binary opposition, by distinguishing what they are not. As an
opposition they are not those who are dominant, the ruling and therefore not the elites. But the
elite can be both foreign and indigenous and thus at regional or local levels either be part of the
elite or according to circumstances and situation, be classified as subaltern. It is the independent
existence which subaltern historians are concerned with delineating and confronting through the
story of subaltern resistance. The subaltern mentalitié is the mentalitié of the subaltern at the time
of opposition, at the moment of their action against domination. The subaltern is thus “the maker
of his own destiny” (Guha vii). As Masselos notes,
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The subaltern may be a historical subject but here also becomes a literary object, an
objectification of the forces of the classic world working on human destiny…subalternity
privileges the role of continued dissent and establishes a traditional, legitimated,
genealogy of opposition. (210)
The Glory of Sri Sri Ganesh exposes the hollowness of the economic, political and social
background against which oppressors like Medini and Ganesh flourish. The maliks glorify
lordship and identify the rural folks as his subjected, the . The novel answers the questions it
raises and as a speculative sociologist Devi experiments with paths that can effectively bring
reformation. For Devi, only protest can affect revolution and hence the insistence on the
importance of resistance and rebellion. Although the title specifies the hovering figure of Sri
Ganesh, finally it is Lacchima, the bonded labourer of the family who liberates Ganesh and
inspires the suppressed to break into rebellion. Whether this change will be long lasting however,
remains for history to unravel. Lacchima‟s bitterness and anger of a lifetime against Medini and
Ganesh is liberated at the end of the novel when Lacchima decides to save him but on her own
terms. In the very opening the novel locates the position of women as subaltern where women is
viewed as an object of reproduction whose status in society depends upon the task of giving birth
to a male child. The author notes satirically:
Another daughter and I turn you out. Terrified. No place to go if turned out. . . . Two cowives, Badke and Majhli, sat like vultures just outside the door. They were also mothers
of daughters and if the youngest wife birthed a son, it would be hard for them. (1)
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And the satiric tone is audible when the author says that Ganesh was a generous man for
he did not neglect “mothers of daughters” (12). When Medini‟s son Ganesh gets married, Medini
calls upon Lacchima to maintain the house: The woman have no choice “their role in this life had
not been freely chosen by them” (28). As women, they were destined to obey, as subaltern
women “the higher castes spoke while the lower castes listened.”
Lacchima cries foul in this stinted environment but with neither a route for escape nor for
love. “I too was hoping to be free . . . Rotten old corpse! His son, his household, his daughter-inlaw- anything that‟s his, that‟s all that‟s important. God knows, I have never cheated him, I never
will, but I feel like setting the house on fire and running away” (30-31). She says: “I‟m
mortgaged. When I‟m sucked dry, useless as an old cow, then he‟ll let me go” (32). Lacchima is
aware of the socio-economic malaise: “All those who work as the malik‟s servants today are
descendents of those who took a loan from him. They can‟t repay it. So they keep on working.
For a share of the crop. That‟s the system” (35). The text draws attention to the state of the
bonded labours .(Bonded Labour Abolition Act(1976)freed all bonded labours with liquidation
of their debts). But the Lacchimas have no identity, no voice.
In the novel, only a thin line exists between fiction and the real. Fiction is only history
recreated. Devi‟s use of language is at once colloquial and localized. Words such as „Bharat,‟
„acchut,‟ „ashauch,‟ „Deota,‟ „devangsi,‟ „hortuki,‟ „kharidi,‟ ‟katcheri,‟ etc place the novel
against a specific spatial and geographical locale. In this regard, it should be mentioned that the
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original Bengali books have been translated into English and the translators have performed the
applaudable task of retaining the flavour and fervour of the original texts. Devi as a sensitive
interrogator exposes the crude social structure and the need for immediate correction. “If one
gives birth to a daughter, is it the mother‟s fault?” (101) or „the mothers of Rukminis were
acchuts (untouchables) but the Rukminis were not” (102). When Pallavi, a city born social
activist arrives into the bhangi toil (the untouchables slum) her supposed sacrifice (of
undertaking a task that is till unheard of among upper castes unless a religious rebel) is bluntly
rejected as being only a “caricature of humanity.” Where Abhay, one of the enlightened
untouchables finally succeeds in fostering a sense of solidarity with the tribals, Pallavi fails and
returns. We are unable to fathom what Pallavi could have achieved because in a place where
woman have no voice, only a body, Pallavi is forced to escape.
However, Devi does not lose faith in the power of women. Only a woman can bring
strength into effect, through “endurance” her feminine consciousness is transformed into positive
strength. Lacchima moves from strength to strength—she calmly bears her agony, loses her
youth, shatters her dreams and yet moves on. At last, she succeeds in breaking the shackles of
her guaranteed silence and leads the way to freedom. People like Ganesh may be wealthy but
they were also savage, uneducated and feudal in outlook. They were impediments to the progress
of the nation. And Lacchima brandishing the sickle cuts off the tie of bonded slavery and pays
back Barha village the death of Ganesh. Ganesh is unabashed when he still teases Lacchima with
dreams of a good living, of basic necessities of life which they are deprived of: “Why should you
stay here, come with me, stay as you used to. A good house. A good food. I‟ll throw out my
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wife, marry again” (164). But this is a new Lacchima, a Lacchima who is ready to win her
freedom at any cost: “Today I shall save you again. But not, Ganesh Singh, in the way you want
me to. Today I shall do it my way” (164). And yes, this subaltern woman finally succeeds in
getting back her own identity.
In the novel, an underlying meta-narrative is concerned with the organization of
knowledge and its exercise in caste struggle Abhay reinstates that even parties with a declared
policy of liberation did not particularly care about tortured and tyrannized rural India. The SDO
believes that law can only be implemented if the people put pressure in the right place. A new
order will remove the old only if the oppressed turn around and retaliate. The fall of Ganesh
heralds this change in the village of Barha and here lies the irony of the title.
In Sri Sri Ganesh, the bhangis are seen composing songs; their right to compose songs on
the village scandals was recognized. In the malik controlled Barha village the only history of
exploitation and oppression of the poor was found in their songs. But the maliks tried to suppress
even this simple right which is also a part of the traditional ritual: “I‟ll teach the bhangis a lesson.
They can make up their songs, paint their faces and clown around but they shouldn‟t bring the
maliks into it” (76). Mahasweta Devi in her preface to The Book of the Hunter acknowledges that
the materials for knowing the history of any adivasi community are in their traditions of oral
lore, songs and folk tales handed down by memory and preserved. In this book Devi draws upon
such materials to identify the shabar-kheria tribes (the forest-dwellers). She explores the cultural
values of the Shabars and how they cope with the slow erosion of their way of life, as more and
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more forest land gets cleared to make way for settlements. She affirms her assistance to
kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti (ix).
Phuli is a daughter of the forest. In the story, Phuli obtains her liberation but here too on
her own terms. For Mukunda, the Brahmin priest of Ararha village, Phuli is to beware of as “she
holds her husbands hand in public and on top of that addresses him as tui. A shameless!” (1),
“tui‟ being a very informal way of calling one‟s husband without respect. Jagadeshwari thinks
otherwise “why just because she uses tui? Can she help it if that is‟their custom?” (1) but
Jagadeshwari is superstitious at the same time. When Mukunda calls her name aloud she says
“God forbid, you‟re saying my name out loud so long after dark! Again I‟ve used tumi instead of
apni because you asked me to. But who knows how much I‟ve sinned” (23). The woman‟s
subaltern position restricted her from showing her face—to a maternal uncle-in-law and this was
a possible reason for a bride to be ousted from her bridal home as happens with Damini in the
story.The story draws from the epic Chandimangal written by thee poet Kabikankan
Mukundaram Chakraborty.The story describes the lives of the Shabars, a tribe who lived by
hunting.
Mukunda is aghast at the thought of Kalya, the Shabar youth killing the innocent birds.
But as Kalya rebukes, they are the shabars, the forest is their Abhayachandi and they are the
children of the forest. Kalya fights it out in the jungle with his bows and arrows and Phuli sells it
in the market. In the modern times, the shabars are part of the market economy. Phuli is
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representative of the jungle at once vibrant and colourful. The legend among the sabars run that
whoever catches the golden monitor lizard on the eighth day of Durga puja (the most important
religious festival of the people living in West Bengal) will become the king and Abhayachandi
(Goddess of the Forest) will reside in his city. Kalketu and Phullora were born of her. In the
modern time Kalya and Phuli become emblematic of Kalketu and Phullora.
In the Shabar community both men and women toiled for their daily victuals. They
married whomever they wanted. They built separate huts after marriage. When the
husband and the wife quarrelled, the husband thrashed his wife; she in turn struck a blow
or two. It wasn‟t the sort of society in which the wife had to take it all lying down. (83)
The positional difference between Jagadeshwari and Phuli at once re-instates the
ideological focus. A deconstruction of the tribal women‟s position affirms the superiority of their
foundation where men and women are at par and considered equals, an aspect that is unapproved
of among the non-tribals. But with dwindling forest, the shabar community was slowly
vanishing. Kalya unable to accept the fact that with the changing times the shabars would also be
part of the market economy and need the market to continue their existence lived bitterly “a
shabar is corrupted by living near a town,” Phuli in contrast kept the household going.
The kings elephant runs into the forest and Kalya and the shabar men desire to hunt it
down least comprehending that the hour of its death had come. Kalya enters deep into the
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forest and is killed by another elephant. Phuli is unable to bear this sudden demise of Kalya.
Her strength and balance gives way and she obtains her moment of escape. Phuli commits
suicide. Herein she manifests a radical opposition to Lacchima. Phuli is the balance between
Jagadiswari and Tejota (the all-supreme tribal God-mother and also the mother-in-law to
Phuli). She is rejected by none and is accepted by all. Even in her death, Phuli fights it alone,
tying up her own hands “who knows exactly how.” While the shabars now hastily prepare
themselves for another episode of migration—another virgin forest—“a place where there
existed no city, no market, no king or any other caste or tribe, where there were only the
forest, water and hills.” Phuli is liberated. Phuli‟s death is symbolic of the erosion of the
forest and the forest dwelling way of life. She becomes part of the earth that constitute
Abhyachandi and the very essence of the Sabar tribe.
Devi has often been criticized as being merely a chronicler of social reality but in fact she
stands as a prophet of the marginal transcending the limitations of material concerns and
highlighting the value of a universal consciousness of exploitation against the marginals and the
strength to protest against it. As Homi K. Bhabha observed, it is in the addition of the
“supplements” that the “minuses” become conspicuous (Bagchi 43). This paper reads into the
identity and position of the tribal woman who is at the same time a subaltern woman and also a
woman seen as subaltern. The Subaltern is the subject and the women further disadvantaged
because of their relative position as objects of sexual and economic exploitation. Devi is one
writer inimitably concerned with the welfare of the landless, dispossessed, and marginalized—
the so-called “subaltern” the voiceless and inarticulate survivors of an internalized new nation
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state. The subaltern is not merely a problematic field of knowing and issues raised in the study of
tribal history in India have only opened wider discourse on oppression, displacement, violence
and alienation that are an integral part of this historical actuality.
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2008.
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